“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!” – Samuel Adams

The push is on to legalize pot, whether under the guise of “medical” marijuana, or out in the open just to get high. Even here in South Dakota, we have “medical” marijuana on the ballot.

In California, they’ve had legalized marijuana for “medicinal” purposes for a number of years, and it isn’t working out nearly as well as the pot pushers claimed it would. They’ve had more–not less–problems with crime, including vandalism, robberies, assaults and murders. Further, in addition to adults being able to adults being able to get a doctor’s excuse to smoke pot for dubious justifications, school children have amazing access to the drug–another pro-pot myth (that children have less access in a legalized environment than they do where drugs are illegal) busted.

In the recent interview below, Jane Usher, a special assistant city attorney in Los Angeles, has cautions for states that might be considering legalizing this drug. She said the “medical” specification on California’s “medical” marijuana law is just “window dressing.” (Big surprise, since many if not most of the people pushing “medical” marijuana legalization are the same pot-heads and pushers who want it legalized, period.)

She said the population demographic that is using large quantities of “medical” marijuana isn’t the people who are truly sick, but the typical group that is susceptible to drug use: white males, age 14-30. She says the doctors are playing right along with it.

Even a rural, relatively conservative state like Montana is sadly learning some of these same lessons–too late.

As I discussed a few months ago, Montana is seeing huge numbers of “medial” marijuana prescriptions being handed out by “mass clinics staffed by out-of-state doctors.”

“I have not seen a single patient using medical marijuana for pain who because of their use of medical marijuana has returned to work or reduced their opioid need,” Kneeland said. “Basically, reading between the lines, they’re smoking marijuana for all the same reason’s everybody else does – to get high. When you’re high, you don’t care about pain.”

Montana is also having the same problems with crime around the legalized drug trade (hmm; thought that was supposed to go away), including assaults, firebombings and at least one beating death. Isn’t it amazing how legalizing pot for “medical” use produces such peaceful, prosperous utopias? That’ s only in the mind of pot heads and pushers, I think (and maybe not even there–but it’s a good line to dupe unsuspecting voters).

Interestingly, a Rand study demolished yet another of the pro-pot rationales: it’ll bring more tax revenue for the state and reduce consumption. While the first one might be believable (in the absence of contradictory data such as the Rand study), common sense tells you the second one is pure malarkey…but when dealing with intellectual softness, sometimes even the obvious has to be proven. You get more of something when you legalize that something. Why do you think we’ve had 50 million abortions since legalizing that? Legalizing abortion certainly hasn’t brought down the number of abortions in America.

We don’t need this poison in South Dakota. There are a myriad of available pain medications available, including non-smoked THC. The “compassion” excuse is just that: another excuse.